Don’t Blame the Potato for Pringles

Last week, Procter & Gamble sold its Pringles brand to Kellogg, for $2.7 billion.

In the scheme of things, this is not big news: a famous brand goes from one corporation to another. Happens all the time. Affects us barely, if at all; you’ll still never be more than a hundred yards from the all-too-familiar red Pringles canister, which, it’s said, made its designer so proud that he had his ashes packed into one after his death.

But the sale inspired some observations about the nature of “food.” Let’s start with a fantasy: suppose P.&G., in a fit of charity, decided that Pringles was, as we all know to be true, a brand that everyone in the world — with the possible exception of P.&G. shareholders and a few employees — would be better off without. I mean, I like Pringles as much as the next guy, but they’re not really “food,” or — to be more accurate — they’re not “real” “food”[1] and I certainly know that I’d be better off without them.

Here’s a short list of other things that $2.7 billion could buy [2]. For that money, you could feed 75 million children for a year, or fund Unicef’s child-assistance operations for two years. You could pay cash for NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover mission ($2.5 billion), and have still be able to foot half the cost of the president’s proposed strengthening of oversight of offshore oil and gas operations, which would save money in the long run. Or you could hire more than 60,000 teachers. Stuff like that.
But both P.&G. and Kellogg are in the business of making money, not feeding people with food[3]. Kellogg, as we all know, makes money by selling non-food to billions of people, and letting the chips (no pun intended) fall where they may. It’s best known for its roster of cereals, including Honey Smacks (with more than 50 percent sugar), Smorz, Scooby-Doo, and “healthy” offerings like All-Bran (a mere 26 percent sugar) and Low-Fat Granola (29 percent).

Basically, Kellogg is big in the business of selling hyper-processed grain heavily laced with sugar, so it makes sense that it seize the opportunity to jump into the market of selling hyper-processed potatoes heavily laced with fat and salt.

Don’t, however, make the mistake of blaming the potato for Pringles. (They’re only 42 percent potato anyway, and about 33 percent fat, though the “reduced fat” variety is “only” 25 percent fat.) Nor should you blame corn for nachos or, for that matter, metal for guns. You can’t blame the raw ingredients with which the earth blesses us for the evil — is that too strong? How about “destructive”? — uses to which they are put.

Yet some people, heavily influenced by the bad press both potatoes and corn routinely garner, have asked me whether those foods are indeed “real” and worth eating at all.

The answer, of course, is “yes.” Potatoes, which are tubers, may be cooked in a variety of ways. (Even microwaved: I zapped a potato last week and sprinkled it with olive oil and salt; delicious, and nothing simpler.) Corn — our largest crop — is a grain, and has been a health-giving staple in the Americas for thousands of years; in winter it’s great in polenta, grits or corn bread; tortillas are year-round, and in summer — well, you know[4].

But only 20 percent of all corn is consumed directly as food, and little of that is sold in the form of whole or even ground corn. Most of it is processed into junk food, and the remaining 80 percent is used for animal feed or ethanol. No wonder people question its very existence.

Similarly, two-thirds of all potatoes are processed, though most of these go into the ubiquitous French fry, once an occasional pleasure and now a threat to national health. We eat more potatoes than ever, about a third of a pound per person per day, but we’ve halved our consumption of fresh (unprocessed, real) potatoes since the ‘60s.

Corn and potatoes are real foods. Unadulterated, an ounce of corn and an ounce of potato contain 24 and 22 calories respectively; their biggest component is water. (A potato is about 80 percent water.) Corn is about 3 percent protein, 2 percent fiber and 1 percent fat; potatoes’ numbers are similar. Not bad.

A 1-ounce serving of corn chips, though, contains around 139 calories, and an ounce of Pringles runs 150. (Everyone knows, however, that the official 1-ounce serving is nonsense. Even Pringles, which says, “once you pop, you can’t stop.”) The calorie discrepancy is explained by the fact that the chips are boiled in oil — fried — replacing most or all but a tiny fraction of the original water with oil. Where’s that oil come from? Well, a lot of it is made from corn; most of the rest is made from soy, another perfectly fine food in its natural form.

What’s the point of all of this? Well, there’s Michael Pollan’s adage not to eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t have recognized as food.[5] As well as the simple notion that we process so many real foods that we barely see them in a natural state.

Were that to change, Kellogg’s and P.&G.’s bottom lines might not look so good. We ourselves, however, might look better, as would our health care bills, which in general rise along with Big Food’s influence and profits.

[2] This would not satisfy P.&G. shareholders, but it would satisfy other shareholders, and it would make work for other people, so those issues may be considered a wash.

[3] Do not make the mistake of confusing the Kellogg corporation with The Kellogg Foundation, which is wholly independent.

[4] In Mexico, where I sit while writing this piece, whole-grain, freshly made corn tortillas are dying a slow death, killed by globalization and urbanization, but they remain a far better option than, say, white bread.